Dark Wings, Season 1
by Gabriel Seraph
Summary: Five of our favorite rebels have been sent to the present day, with no way to return, leaving them no choice but to simply blend in to this strange pre-apocalypse society. Then, everything changes when a boy asks them for help to get rid of the men trying to kill him - an army of Peacekeepers. AU, some OC's, moderate violence and language, bloody hilarity.
1. The Wire - Part 1

AN: The premise for this story is that it is set after the events of the final book, when five of the main characters have time-traveled back to the present day. There will be major twists involved, natch, and I'm gonna do this basically like a TV series - if readership is good enough, I will keep the story going over several "seasons," otherwise I might just bring it to an end with a massive cliffhanger! Please don't make me end it that way, 'cause I hate that kind of ending too. To quote Florence + The Machine, "You want a revelation, some kind of resolution."

Science? I don't need no stinking science! Sanity-free storytelling, that's the order of the day from me!

R&R and enjoy!

P.S. I hereby vote _Catching Fire_ for Best Picture!

Dark Wings, Season 1

Episode 1 - The Wire

"No," Johanna says. "No, no, no. Why would they use arrows? What good would that do?"

I've almost had enough of trying to explain this to her. "Arrows are good for piercing the skin. Axes just get...stuck. It gets bloody and gory and everywhere. In fact, why are we even talking about this while we're eating?" I stare daggers at my chocolate frozen yogurt - better known as glorified ice cream - and move it aside. Maybe Prim will eat it when she comes back.

"Can arrows pierce metal armor?" Johanna asks. "Can they?"

"If they're heavy enough, yes," I tell her.

Johanna snorts into her cheese bread. "That makes no sense. Arrows back then were thin and brittle, weren't they? And weren't they made with glass tips or something?"

"I don't know what you're thinking of," I tell her, "but in Medieval Europe? No. And it's obsidian, by the way. That's the name of the glass stuff."

Taking a bite of the cheese bread (I wish I could remember what that stuff was really called, but it's a foreign word that I can't even begin to figure out how to pronounce), Johanna rolls her eyes. "I'm not book smart, Kat. I'm street smart. I never had time for a proper edumacation."

"We've officially been here too long, then," I groan. "_Edumacation._ No wonder this world came to an end. They freaking suck at everything. Except stuffing their faces."

"Like we used to do at Games parties?" Johanna points out.

"Don't remind me," I grumble.

Johanna leans back and eats more cheese bread, then leans out into the aisle and picks up something someone dropped on the floor. It's a napkin, and it's been written on. "Someone called Sean Wolff left this behind," she says. "And it's got a phone number on it. Here, look." She hands it to me so I can read it.

"But why?" I ask.

"I think he likes you, Kitty-Kat," says Johanna. "It's a thing they do around here. Don't ask me why. Hey, why don't we disappoint him? Huh? Huh?"

By the gleam in her eye, and the way she's rubbing her sneaker against my knee, I can see instantly what Johanna has in mind. I'm not really convinced it's a good idea, but I decide to give it a shot since I'm not at all ready for romance anyway. As soon as Sean Wolff - whom Johanna identifies as a medium-height (somewhere about halfway between Peeta and Finnick, say) boy with frizzy brown hair and angular black glasses - walks by again, I cup Johanna's chin in my hand and lean forward to kiss her full on the lips. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Sean Wolff shuffle away, his head down. I almost want to see him blushing, 'cause that would be really what makes the moment worth it.

"Holy Lord," says Peeta as he and Finnick return with plates of corn bread and clam chowder, respectively. "Katniss, tell me you haven't jumped across the road on us without telling anyone."

"Hey, relax," Johanna says brightly. "I just saved Katniss from a geeky weakling suitor who would never survive the Games without being carried around 24/7."

"Low blow, Johanna," Finnick says, recognizing the stealthy insult she has delivered Peeta's way.

Johanna laughs, and Finnick flinches a bit, signaling that she's now taken to rubbing his knee with her shoe instead. "I'm an equal-opportunity flirt, Finn-Finn. Deal with it. Besides, girls kissing will only get him more interested in you, Kitty-Kat. Boys like that. Trust me."

"Not this boy," says Peeta.

Johanna laughs again, pretty harshly this time. "Don't act so holier-than-thou, Petey. I betcha you got serious boner confusion just now, am I right? I say again - two girls kissing turns boys on every time."

"Why would boys like to see two girls kissing?" Prim asks, having just returned from the bathroom. I edge aside the half-eaten bowl of frozen yogurt for her to eat, and she tucks in.

"Well, have you ever wanted to see two boys kissing, Prim?" Johanna asks. "Same basic principle."

"Don't corrupt her," I say.

"Relax," Johanna says. "It's all good. You'd be hard-pressed to find two boys kissing, anyway, Prim, because boys don't really like to experiment so much. Now, are we all done here?" She swallows the last piece of her cheese bread and looks around at the rest of us, who are all still eating. Except me, of course. I've lost what little appetite I had left.

"How did we end up working together again?" I ask nobody in particular, then I put my head down and shake it in exasperation while I wait for the guys to finish their food.

Five minutes later, we bundle up to ward off the early-winter chill and leave Sweet Tomatoes, heading for our car. It's a big green van which Finnick scrounged up somewhere, and it was a simple matter of adding a nuclear converter to the engine to make it run cleanly and cut down on the cost of gas. Plus, it has blinds on the windows, for some reason. It's actually very comfortable, and very good for sleeping in.

And apparently very easy to break into, also, because as I get in, I trip backwards upon seeing someone in the back seat who isn't supposed to be there. Someone not in our little party. Someone who nevertheless looks familiar to me. It's Sean Wolff, the boy from the restaurant.

I lunge for the bow and arrow I keep tucked under the left middle seat and aim it at Wolff. "Who are you?" I yell, even though I know his name. "What are you doing here?"

"I...I...I came for help," he stutters. "They're trying to kill me."

"Who?" yells Johanna, who has now come in and grabbed her axe. "Who's trying to kill you?"

"The space suit guys," he says. "The guys in white w-with the mirror visors."

Johanna and I exchange worried glances, and then we look back at Peeta, Finnick, and Prim. All of us recognize the description Sean Wolff has just given us all too well.

_Peacekeepers._


	2. The Wire - Part 2

"Where did you see these guys?" I ask, trying to keep my voice level. Inside, I'm panicking. _How did they get here? _I think. _I thought Plutarch said he'd destroy the machine after we used it._

Wolff looks around nervously. "Um, over by the lake. They were searching the parking lot, and they zeroed in on my car. That's how I knew they wanted to get me." He pauses. "I, um, take it you know these guys?"

"They're called Peacekeepers," says Peeta. "But that name's a lie."

"I figured," says Wolff. "With the heat they were packing, no way they were here to spread free love and drugs."

Johanna blinks in surprise. "What? And - wait a minute, we're forgetting something. How'd you get in here in the first place?"

"It w-was unlocked," says Wolff, but his shaking voice suggests he's lying. Of course, I was already sure he'd be lying anyway, because there's no way Finnick would forget to lock up the van when leaving it unattended. Still, if there's Peacekeepers coming after Wolff, for whatever reason, then we've gotta protect him. That's one of the instructions Plutarch left us in the video file detailing our mission. One of the ones we were able to pick up on, anyway. The video file managed to get severely corrupted in transit, so most of it is unlistenable or unviewable. Or both.

Either way, this was what we'd heard from him: "_I know I said I would destroy the Vortex, but I have no way to guarantee that it's the only one in existence. Or that the Counter-Revs don't have one. So if the Peacekeepers, or any remotely Capitol-like people, ever show up in the past, you gotta get rid of them. If they screw with the timeline..." _At this point the transmission is again garbled beyond recognition, but the main gist is clear.

So, instead of continuing to question him, we have Wolff buckle up in the backseat as we drive back to our little hideaway. It's a medium-sized house in a wooded, relatively secluded neighborhood. We keep up the rent on it by using the money Finnick earns at the cannery. It was his idea to settle in an area that would ultimately become part of District 4's expansive fishing grounds, so he'd be able to get a job he was well-qualified for. Peeta and Prim add to our income by working at a local bakery specializing in artisanal bread and fancy cupcakes.

Back at the house, we lead Wolff through the gate into the forest beyond. This is where I go to hunt. Despite being on the fringes of a built-up area, it's teeming with deer, rabbit, and wild sheep and other animals just waiting to be consumed by us. There's also a river full of delicious salmon and trout, and Finnick taught Johanna how to fish so she could do so in his absence. Everybody has something to do, some way to earn their keep.

Our first order of business in the woods is to see if Wolff can do so in his own way. To be honest, I'm not sure he can. He's nowhere near as muscular as Peeta or Finnick, and he, like just about everyone in this past world, seems to have no idea how to handle a halfway-decent weapon.

But I've been wrong before, and today is no exception.

"So, before you join our little team," Finnick begins, "we'd like to know what your skills are."

"My skills?" Wolff asks. "I'm guessing you're not talking about my ability to absorb pop culture like a sponge here."

Johanna rolls her eyes at Wolff's weak sarcasm. "No. We mean, can you hunt or fish or identify edible plants? You know, like-" She stops herself at the last second, remembering another of Plutarch's commands - we're not allowed to mention the future we come from, or anything from our future. Especially not the Hunger Games. He seemed to think we'd somehow create a different timeline where the Hunger Games would really go on for centuries as the Capitol originally planned. Or something. Again, this information is only partial at best.

"I do have a bit of skill with designing weapons, if that's what you mean," says Wolff.

"Designing weapons?" I ask. "Like what?"

Wolff reaches into the pocket of his hoodie and pulls out a strange object. It's a coil of metal wire, with a small length of the wire sticking out from the center to form a kind of handle. It reminds me more than a bit of the big wire Beetee had used during the Quarter Quell, but on a much smaller scale.

"What's that?" Prim asks. It's the question on all of our minds; we've never seen a so-called "weapon" like this before, and have no idea how it could work.

"Feel it," says Wolff, passing the wire around. We each handle it in turn and discover that it's extremely light. "Spun steel," he says. "Very tough to figure out how to work it, but I got it right in the end. Watch this." He walks up to a nearby tree and spins the coiled wire around in his hand, pivoting around the handle. I realize that his intention is to use it like a hammer, like the big hammer the blond guy used in that movie Finnick had raved about so much last summer after his buddies from the cannery took him to see it. But it's so light that it couldn't possibly-

Suddenly, in a lightning-fast movement, Wolff whacks the spun-steel wire into the tree, and it splinters to pieces. This is a three-foot-thick pine tree and it breaks apart like a toothpick sculpture on contact with Wolff's wire invention. Imagine what it could do to animals. _Or Peackeepers_, I realize.

"I call it 'grave wire,'" Wolff says proudly, as the five of us just stand there and stare.

Finally, Johanna finds her voice. "In that case, welcome to the Dark Wings, Sean Wolff." She reaches out and shakes his hand, her awed expression still stuck on her face.


	3. The Wire - Part 3

"Hold on a second," says Prim. "We're just gonna let this guy join us just like that?"

Prim does have a very good point. I'm doubting Wolff a bit too, because all he's really done is just swung some coiled wire into a tree and destroyed it. Granted, it did seem like it should have been impossible, since the wire was so light and the tree was so solid, so maybe Wolff could be useful. But there's a lot of stuff he's not telling us, so it's a bit hard for me to just accept him.

"Yeah," Peeta says. "Maybe if you could tell us how your grave wire thing works?"

Wolff twisted the grave wire in his fingers. "I'm not sure how it works myself," he says. "All I know is that it seems to have a hell of a lot of centrifugal force bottled up inside it or something. So it can break things if you're not careful with it."

"But you said you discovered it, didn't you?" Johanna asks.

"I dunno," says Wolff. "I just figured out how to make it. Not sure where I got the idea, but I had it in mind somehow, and...well, you saw it in action."

Finnick nods appreciatively. "It is pretty deadly. We need this guy, Prim. We could use him."

I finally speak up. "Before we make our decision, I have a question that you haven't answered yet. How did you get into our van in the first place? And before you answer, I think it'd be a little simpler if we agreed not to lie to each other."

"I guess so," Wolff says. "But you're not gonna believe me anyway if I tell you the truth."

"Try us," I say. "We can believe a lot of weird stuff."

Wolff sighs. "Fine. If you must know, I reversed the polarity of the magnetic particles in the lock. In fact, that's how I made the grave wire, too. I can do funny things with magnets and metal. Ramped-up energy stuff that doesn't normally happen in nature."

We all exchange glances. "Yeah, I guess you weren't kidding," says Johanna. "That _is _pretty tough to believe. No offense, Cubb."

"Cubb?"

"Hey, if you're gonna be with us, you gotta have a nickname," says Johanna. "Since your name is Wolff with two f's, I think it makes sense to call you Cubb with two b's."

Peeta rolls his eyes. "That's the dumbest nickname I ever heard," he says.

"I agree," says Prim. "It's ridiculous."

"I do believe JoJo may be losing her touch," says Finnick.

Johanna dead-arms him. "Hey, who's the Official Nicknamer here? Fine, I guess I'll have to come up with something better. But for that, he's gonna have to stay with us. All in favor?" We all raise our hands, even Prim and myself. Guess any doubts we had are pretty much overwhelmed by our curiosity to see if Sean Wolff is anywhere near as useful and/or dangerous as he wants us to think he is. "Then officially, welcome to the Dark Wings, Sean Wolff," Johanna says, shaking his hand again. The rest of us follow suit in quick succession.

"Now, you said the Peacekeepers are after you?" I ask. "And they were by the lake?"

Wolff nods. "Yup. So are we gonna go back there, try to smoke 'em out or something?"

"Why not?" asks Peeta. "I haven't had the chance to stretch my legs in a while."

"Neither have I," says Johanna, getting that gleam in her eye that we all know too well. She's getting bloodthirsty again. Last time that happened, she took down about ten trees trying to work off her pent-up energy. To this day the authorities are still trying to find out who the culprit is, not that they ever will.

"That's a good idea," says Wolff. "Maybe that way I'll be able to get some explanations out of you guys. Like, who are these Peacekeepers exactly?"

Peeta and I exchange glances again. We can't tell him the truth because Plutarch said we weren't supposed to. And I agreed not to lie to him, so I can't answer his question. Luckily, Peeta, being blessed with sociopathically better social skills than me, steps in and starts filling Wolff's head with a bogus story about the Peacekeepers being secret government agents who want us because we were genetically engineered lab runaways. Or something like that. It all sounds like one of those young-adult books Prim likes to read sometimes. I get the strange feeling Wolff can sense Peeta's not telling the truth. He did say something about being able to absorb pop culture like a sponge. Chances are he knows the same story that is apparently inspiring Peeta's lies.

But if he does recognize it, he says nothing about it. That really unnerves me, even more so than if he'd just called Peeta out. It's like if your parent doesn't say anything when you're just waiting for them to yell at you, and it's even worse that way and both parties know it.

"You know, I knew there was something different about you guys," says Wolff as we pile back into the van and head for the lake. "Guess I made the right decision coming to you."

"What about us is different?" Finnick asks.

"You don't seem to belong in regular society any more than I do," says Wolff. "And we weirdos really have to stick together." He leans back and closes his eyes, but then perks up when Finnick turns on the radio and a light pop song starts playing. We're not too big on this kind of music, but Wolff apparently likes it, because he asks Finnick to keep it on this song. _"You know I'm bad at communication, it's the hardest thing for me to do,_" sings a female voice. "_And it's said it's the most important part that relationships will go through..._"

Even I'm starting to like this song a little bit, because it isn't really as bad as other pop songs out there. It's catchy and the lyrics actually make sense and feel like they were written by real people instead of machines. "What is this song?" I ask.

"'The Wire,' by Haim," says Wolff. "It's good stuff, right?"

Sadly, we don't get to hear the whole thing, because halfway through the song we arrive at the lake. Wolff points across the parking lot to his car, a red Pontiac Aztek SUV. We've been told that this is one of the ugliest cars ever made, but in person we see that it's nowhere near as bad-looking as people think. The back windshield has been partially broken, which Wolff explains was caused by the Peacekeepers when they broke into his car.

"So do you think they're still hanging around here somewhere?" asks Finnick.

"I found my car like this in the morning after I went for my walk on the beach," says Wolff. "So that makes me think they had a general idea of my routines, so maybe they knew where to find me at any time of day in general."

"And would you normally be here at the lake at this time of day?" I ask.

"No," says Wolff. "I'd be in class at...oh no. They're probably looking at Mar Vista right now!"

"Mar Vista?" asks Johanna.

"That's the local college," I explain, having once accidentally wandered into their grounds during a nighttime hunting trip. Their security guards chased me away and I haven't gone back since, 'cause I have no way of knowing if they were able to successfully photograph me.

Today, though, it seems like it's officially our day for all the rules to go out the window. So we drive over to Mar Vista's campus in the hills and, armed with my bow and arrow, I lead the rest of the group behind Wolff, who directs me to the class where he's supposed to be right now.

Wolff quickly looks inside the window of his classroom and curses under his breath. "Dammit, they're in there. Two of 'em, and they're arguing with Professor Corven."

I look into the window and see that he's right. Professor Corven, apparently a middle-aged woman with a slight resemblance to my mother, is shouting at the white-suited Peacekeepers. I can't hear what they're saying, but it doesn't look like it's very nice stuff they're saying. My suspicions are confirmed when one of the Peacekeepers actually pulls his gun on Corven.

"Oh, not cool," says Wolff. He barges into the room and starts yelling, "Hey, you guys? You want me? Come and get me, bitch!"

The Peacekeepers train their guns on Wolff now, and I take that as my cue to come in and shoot one of them with my arrow, right in the knee. The other pulls his gun, but Sean spins his grave wire around and whacks him in the head, knocking him out instantly.

Corven pants a little bit, still clearly buzzing with adrenaline from being threatened with a shooting death. "Mr. Wolff? What are you doing?" she asks.

"Don't ask," I answer for Wolff. "Trust me, lady, you don't wanna know." We leave the room quickly, before anyone else can come in and start asking all the wrong questions, the way it seems everyone in the past tends to do.


End file.
